How An Awful AIDS Joke Launched A Hashtag And Got This Woman Fired

Oh, white people: will you ever learn to not make Twitter jokes with the words “AIDS” and “I’m white”? Or AIDS jokes altogether. Before getting onto an airplane from London yesterday, Justine Sacco, the communications director for media conglomerate IAC, tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Naturally, this sub-Dice Man one-liner didn’t go over well, and before long, IAC commented on the situation, saying, “This is an outrageous, offensive comment that does not reflect the views and values of IAC.” But what made Justine’s story go viral was what came next: “Unfortunately, the employee in question is unreachable on an international flight.”

The only good thing to come out of all this: someone registered JustineSacco.com so that it redirects to the charity Aid for Africa. Oh, and yes, she landed. No word on whether her in-flight movie was Philadelphia or Rent.

As much as I dislike this woman’s comment, I have to agree with you somewhat. Racism isn’t a good thing, but Twitter has created a “stealing a loaf of bread gets your hands cut off” sort of punishment.

Yeah, not saying the joke was good or that she’s not an idiot for how she delivered it (that is, to the whole freaking world via twitter), but I wouldn’t say this is a Phil Robertson orwhateverhisnameis type of situation. That dude was clearly serious, while this woman was making an (albeit) horrible joke.

To put it another way, I could see myself making such a joke in a group of friends, but the subtext would very clearly be that white people are terribly entitled and usually awful. My friends would get it because they know me. This lady should have known the difference.

In defense of the cyber lynch mob, if you’re stupid enough to say this sort of thing in a public forum then you deserve to ride the shit-storm as it picks your house up and drops it in a heap 500 yards down the road.

When you try to make a racist “joke” and it misses the mark, it always ends up offensive. When you are a public relations employee and you tweet said racist unfunny joke to the entire planet, what do you think would happen? Also, she has repeatedly tweeted stuff like this and nothing happened.

If you’re going to sit there and say that in your ideal world people would just brush it off and say “its ok, it’s just a joke guys!!’, you are all kinds of stupid.

most professional comedians wouldn’t make that joke because it’s hacky or unfunny. and if they did, it would be phrased in a context that’s appropriate. hence why dumb broads who are communication directors but fancy themselves amateur comedians should just knock that shit off.

I for one do not give a crap what the hell a random person tweeted. If she were a friend of mine, I’d probably reassess our relationship due to her racism, but I really don’t think that the internet should have decided she should lose her job because of this.

Even if made on her own time, her comments reflect negatively on her employer. She works for a freaking PR company. I doubt many of their clients would want someone with this hanging over her/his head working on their accounts.

This generation is coming into power for sure – discovering that overnight we can literally make millionaires or utterly wreck someones life. Though “wreck” is subjective if you’re equally happy to be “famous” for something like this. She’s a star overnight wheee! And you an tell your kids “yeah I tweeted about that within an HOUR of it happening!”

The real winners here are the media outlets and special interest groups who’ve replaced investigative and international reporting, and national and grass-roots community action campaigns with the cheap and easy sale of outrage. Congratulations guys, you’re truly the rightful heirs to Woodward and Bernstein and the SCLC.

Selling outrage is cheaper and easier than actively working for positive change. It’s almost like a drug, it gets people’s heart rate up, fires their emotions, and after feeding that high by making a few angry comments on the internet, the anger dissipates, the person feels fulfilled. They haven’t done anything, but they can go back to ignoring the subjects they never really cared about in the first place (the millions of people affected by war and disease in Africa for example) while still feeling good about fighting the good fight.

Yes but what have you done? Not saying that you haven’t done anything, just curious. This is more directed at your argument, which I see bandied about quite a bit these days.

If you’re going to complain about people getting outraged about things that offend them, then proceed to get outraged at said people, then you’re part of the problem too. At least these people are angry at something that greatly ills our society, racism in this case, as opposed to just getting mad at people because you’re either a contrarian or don’t feel that racism warrants our attention and ire (it does).

And, for the record, I don’t think anyone who’s getting outraged at this specific instance is really achieving any sort of great sweeping change, but let people be outraged if they want. They’re achieving at least a modicum of progress by not accepting racism in our society, while those that complain about them just type away on their computers doing even less.

First off, the “you are outraged at outrage” argument is a logical fallacy. I never expressed outrage here (nor did I complain about the plight of white people), I just wearily pointed out that people substitute outrage for action more often than not. A quick survey of any American news site will show that this story is more popular than other, much more important topics in Africa. Unlike most people I actually do care about Africa and follow various news sources from the continent. I don’t have enough money to buy a new pair of pants right now, so I won’t be donating 5 cents a day. But I hope to work in Africa at some point. Also unlike the current Internet Instant Justice Crusaders, I understand issues like PEPFAR and the Millenium Challenge Corporation, as well as unrest in countries like South Sudan, Nigeria, and Mali. In other words, I’m educating myself on issues that I consider to be important.

This is simply an assertion on my part, but I seriously doubt that more than 10% of the people who are outraged by the tweet (yes, a single insignificant string of text from someone of no importance) understand any of the above. The reason I don’t buy the outrage is because people will forget all about this is very short order. They won’t lift a finger to do anything about the tens of millions of Africans who are affected by disease and war. Even more galling, they won’t even try to understand these issues; they won’t read the news or give up People for Foreign Affairs. I have a big problem with people who put in half a penny’s worth of effort into something and then claim, “well that’s better than nothing what are you doing?” No, it’s really not better than doing nothing because half a penny is too small a gesture to affect significant change. It’s like switching from smoking 2 packs a day to just 39 cigarettes. Yup, that’ll put off lung cancer by about 56 seconds.

@JTRO: That’s fair, I wasn’t trying to criticize you specifically since I didn’t want to assume what I don’t know about you. Actually educating yourself is important and I hope that your chance to go to Africa some day. A friend of mine was teaching in Ghana for a year and I visited and helped her out for a few months. It’s a wonderful country and actually being able to actually help them was a very empowering experience. I sincerely hope that you are able to have an experience like that that as well!

I feel that you would understand the ability for mere changes in attitude to actually make a difference, given your own background though. Once again, if I’m assuming too much feel free to correct me, but it sounds like you haven’t been able to affect a great deal of change in a region which holds a great deal of your attention yet. But by educating yourself and spreading what you’ve learned, you might be able to influence someone who can. I’ve had a lot of friends who were ignorant of worldwide issues and suffering in their own communities, and simply showing them that injustice was enough to change them and get them heavily involved in philanthropy. That’s why I feel that vocally advocating against any injustice that you see is inherently a positive act. There will be those people who do it for nothing more than self-gratification but that doesn’t make the act itself bad. It’s their follow up that’s wrong. You can totally hate the tumblr social justice horde for their smugness and inability to actually do anything, I sure do, but I certainly don’t bemoan that they’re making ignorant idiots feel unwelcome in our society.

So, to combat her obvious racist remarks – we have people blaming and promoting hate speech against an entire race? “Oh white people?” Really? This isn’t a “white person” thing it’s a Justine Sacco thing, who happens to be white. Hate comes from both ends and until we all learn love and compassion for our fellow man – we are promoting and spreading that hate. How can we be surprised by comments like hers, then? Bigotry and hate begets bigotry and hate.

I’m not the guy getting all butthurt over a stupid joke told by a nobody.

I’m just pointing out that the punishment she’s endured (death threats and loss of employment) is wildly incommensurate with the thoughtcrime she has committed, and that people who engage in these petty virtual lynch mobs are pretty pathetic.

Death threats are definitely an extreme overreaction to something like this. But, this is the internet. So nothing surprises me.

But losing her job? Absolutely fine with it. SHE WORKS IN PR, PEOPLE. I don’t care WHO you’re tweeting or facebooking to. It’s the internet. Nothing is private. If you want to just make jokes with your friends, start a group text. When you work in PR and do something as stupid as this, you deserve to be fired. And anyone who thinks posting whatever the hell they want on facebook or twitter always comes without consequence needs to open their eyes.

People really overshare in social media to begin with, but that’s another debate entirely.

Jesus christ. Am I even on Uproxx right now. Just read a bunch of comments of people crying over some lame bitch making a bad joke. Get over it. That being said I agree with everything dissident has said.